Monday, September 16, 2013

The Atlantic on single motherhood

There's a column at The Atlantic which looks at the income of married mothers compared to single mothers. It turns out that the married women earn a lot more (a difference of $19,000 per annum).

What conclusion do the authors draw from this income disparity? They came up with the following:

Hence the rise of single parenting, particularly single mothers, represents both a promise and a problem. If this is the path forward for society, we need to do all that we can to ensure that for these families single parenting is in fact a dream, and not the enormous challenge that it currently is today.

I find it interesting that this was written by a data analyst and an economic policy researcher. It shows that even for people like this it is possible to suffer from the "let's reshape society detached from reality" mindset typical of liberals.

Do they really believe that single parenthood might be "the path forward for society"? Do they really want society to expend its resources to ensure that "single parenting is in fact a dream"?

I still manage to be surprised at times by the way that moderns think about things. Here we have several intelligent men who seriously entertain the idea that you could advance society on the basis of single motherhood. Have they thought about what might happen to the men who would previously have been the husbands of these women? Have they considered what might happen to the work ethic of men who have no wife and children to support? Have they considered what might happen to the social behaviour of men who have no reason to commit to society?

And what does it mean to believe that single motherhood might be a "dream"? Does this mean that marital love has no role to play in women's fulfilment? Does it mean that children are as happy and as well socialised without a father as with one?

I've written before that liberals seem to want to pursue a creative spirit in the making of themselves and the reshaping of society. Unfortunately they don't want to do this within the constraints of the givens of human existence - neither what is gifted to us as part of our condition, nor the fallen aspects of human nature.

Nor does the liberal attempt to be "detached creative spirits" really lead to imaginative concepts about how human life might be. The assumption of liberal thought is often that there is only one true end of life and that is to work at a job. Therefore, think our Atlantic writers, if only single mothers were as well-employed as everyone else, then single motherhood could be a path forward for society and a dream for women. It's not a very sophisticated view of what makes a human life worthwhile.

Finally, I'll point out that many of the comments to the piece don't follow a liberal mindset. Not everyone has gone that way.

7 comments:

Is it maybe that women from a low socioeconomic background are more likely to breed out of wedlock and be so ill-educated, lazy or serially unwise in their choices that they will do nothing to improve their lot in life?

The only reasons the authors address are the problems of childcare for single mothers and the absence in the US of paid maternity leave.

To me, the big issue here is that liberal beliefs regarding the family are sinking in, at least amongst the liberal intelligentsia. There is a casual acceptance that it is just as legitimate for a woman to create a single mother family as a married mother one.

I had a conversation with a female colleague on this issue. She is very respectably middle-class and married. But when I mentioned some former students who have chosen to become single mothers (on welfare) she said breezily that it shouldn't be an issue, that we've been talking about creating a diversity of family types and that it wouldn't make a difference.

Mark Richardson: "But when I mentioned some former students who have chosen to become single mothers (on welfare) she said breezily that it shouldn't be an issue, that we've been talking about creating a diversity of family types and that it wouldn't make a difference."

Then all that stuff about black crime being about "broken families" rather than heritable characteristics is out the window.

So is "culture" as a fig-leaf for race in a lot of other contexts. If you can turn something as fundamental as family upside down and inside out without consequences, "culture" is not the issue.

Of course the real rampart of her broken intellectual position is (likely to be) that you can't tell her that, because at the mere mention of forbidden concepts like "race" she'll have an attack of the vapors.

"Here we have several intelligent men who seriously entertain the idea that you could advance society on the basis of single motherhood."

Do not forget that some men do (or think they do) benefit from dissolution of traditional family. It's cads, lazy men, promiscuous men, dark triad men etc., etc. And some of them are quite intelligent and quite good at hiding their personality from public.

"Have they thought about what might happen to the men who would previously have been the husbands of these women? Have they considered what might happen to the work ethic of men who have no wife and children to support? Have they considered what might happen to the social behaviour of men who have no reason to commit to society?"

Actually nothing. From what I can see around me, it does not stop responsible & productive men from working and doing responsible things towards society. I suspect it is actually genetics. So, feminists and bad men can run the scam for (several) generations keeping the system sustainable. There is a really long way down to a situation when people will starve to death and society will not be able to produce enough food to feed them.

From what I can see around me, it does not stop responsible & productive men from working and doing responsible things towards society.

Maybe. But if you look at the graphs coming out of America, there is a steady decline in family outcomes. It seems to begin within the lower socio-economic groups and then work its way upward. Already I can see the beginning of certain trends here in Australia. I know of a number of couples where the man either doesn't work, or else has casual work, and is supported by his partner. And I know several men in their 40s who are unmarried and childless and who don't have a stable participation in the workforce.

At the moment, this is still a minority outcome, but that's partly because a traditional culture of marriage is still holding amongst most people.

The decline in male employment is largely due to the collapse of the manufacturing sector and the off shoring and outsourcing of jobs. This is beginning to affect the professional classes as more professional jobs such as soft ware engineering are outsourced and cheaper workers are imported from the Third World.

This is a direct consequence of the economic policies pursued by Western Governments.